The upcoming ubuntuBSD distro has been in development since March 2016, and it is now time for it to get in the spotlight. The final release is due soon, according to the latest tweet from the project's official Twitter page.

For those behind on their ubuntuBSD reading, this is a unique project that aims to offer users a desktop-oriented operating system combining the familiarity of the Ubuntu/Debian platforms with the power of the FreeBSD kernel.

Until today, the development of ubuntuBSD has taken place under the 15.10 version number. This means that it's been based on the Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf), whose end-of-life support is approaching very fast (sometime next month).

But it looks like developer Jon Boden has been working hard in the past few weeks to rebase the upcoming OS on Canonical's latest distribution, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), as well as the kernel from FreeBSD 10.3.

The default desktop environment of ubuntuBSD will be based on the lightweight Xfce 4.12, which has been customized for modern times. Of course, you'll also be able to find all the latest open-source applications, such as LibreOffice, Mozilla Firefox, and many others.

If you want to help the ubuntuBSD developers finalize the operating system, you can download the latest ISO image right now via our website, test it and report bugs on the project's official forums, where you'll also find various documentation about the upcoming distro.

Built on solid foundations: Next release of #ubuntuBSD is due soon. It will be based on #Ubuntu 16.04 #XenialXerus and #FreeBSD 10.3. — ubuntuBSD (@ubuntuBSD) June 12, 2016